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Salmon or Meat Fritters
Use equal parts of salmon (or left over meat chopped) and ground cracker crumbs. Add boiling water to soften. Season with pepper, salt and butter. Mix thoroughly. Make into patties 1/2 inch thick. Fry in hot fat browning both sides well.
A frugal use-it-up patty with no binder beyond softened cracker crumbs. The whole thing hinges on getting the moisture right and not crowding the pan.
- The hinge: add water sparinglyAdd the boiling water a spoonful at a time, just until the crumbs swell and the mixture holds together when squeezed. A wet mix will slump and break apart in the fat; these patties have no egg to hold them.
- "Ground cracker crumbs"Plain soda crackers or saltines, crushed fine. The recipe says only "equal parts," so measure the crumbs to match the volume of salmon from a standard can. Panko is coarser and more open and binds less well here. If you use salted crackers, hold back on the added salt.
- Salmon means cannedIn a church cookbook of this period this would almost certainly be tinned salmon, bones and skin included. Many cooks today pick out the vertebrae and skin, though the soft round bones mash in without notice and add calcium. Drain the liquid and reserve it; use it in place of some of the water for more flavour.
- Chill before fryingTwenty minutes in the refrigerator firms the patties considerably and makes them far easier to turn. Not in the original, but worth the wait.
- "Hot fat"About 1/4 inch of a neutral oil, shortening or bacon fat in a heavy skillet over medium-high — roughly 350–365F. A crumb should sizzle at once. Cooler fat lets the cracker soak up grease.
- Cooked meat onlyThe "left over meat chopped" is already-cooked roast, boiled beef or chicken. The frying here browns the outside; it will not cook raw meat through in a half-inch patty over that heat.
- Yield and servingA can of salmon with equal crumbs makes roughly six to eight patties, enough for three or four at lunch. A white sauce, egg sauce or a squeeze of lemon suits them; the mixture is dry on its own.
Cracker crumbs stood in for breadcrumbs across American home cooking well into the twentieth century, and canned salmon was one of the cheapest reliable proteins on a Midwest pantry shelf after the Pacific canneries expanded — beginning on the Sacramento in the mid-1860s and the Columbia by 1866, growing through the 1870s and reaching Alaska from 1878 — a tin kept a long time and needed no ice. Fritters and croquettes of this kind were how a household turned Sunday's roast into Monday's luncheon, and the interchangeable "salmon or meat" in the title is the point: the recipe is a method, not a dish. Church cookbooks like this one were sold to raise money for the congregation, and their recipes tend to share that character — short, forgiving, assuming the cook already knows what a patty should feel like in her hands.